What's missing:
Unlimited Hydroplanes, the traditional featured class of the event.

With no Unlimited Hydroplanes in the Mission Bay pits, there are many new faces on the scene of the Bayfair powerboat races this weekend.

One of the more interesting belongs to 21-year-old Kayleigh Perkins.

Not only does Perkins drive in one of the co-featured — if lesser than the absent Unlimiteds — classes this weekend, she already has clinched her third national driver's title and second boat championship in the Unlimited Lights class.

Of the more than 100 boats assembled in the East Vacation Isle and Crown Point Shore (drag boats) pits, less than a handful are driven by women — for a reason.

“My disadvantage is my strength,” Perkins said yesterday. “Cars have power steering; race boats don't. It takes some muscle to get one of these things around the course.”

But Perkins said she's working out toward the goal of eventually becoming the first female driver on the Unlimited tour. Teams already have expressed interest in Perkins, although she admits she will be selective.

“I want to do the Unlimiteds,” she said. “But it has to be with the right team.”

Toward that result, Perkins is being counseled by Hall of Fame Unlimited Hydroplane champion Chip Hanauer.

Plus, the Unlimited Lights race five-lap features, with courses measuring 1¼ to 1⅔ miles — the distance this weekend — in length. The Unlimiteds run on 2- to 2½-mile courses.

“I'm a jockey when it comes to boat racers,” joked the 5-foot-6 Perkins, who's working on her strength through her daytime job of cutting and installing commercial windows for a Seattle glass company.

Perkins has been around boat racing all her life, although her family was into the administrative end of the annual Seafair races in Seattle rather than driving.

“My dad was a committee chairman and a judge,” she said. “I grew up inside the course on a boat, watching the boats. I never wanted to drive.”

But after her older brother Brian caught the racing bug, he talked his 15-year-old sister into taking a spin in his 2½-liter hydro.

“It was unbelievable,” she recalled of her first experience in a race boat. “I thought I was going out by myself, and there were a lot of other boats practicing at the same time. It was rough, and a lot of stuff was going on, and I loved it.”

Perkins soon started racing small hydros “with some but not total success.”

But when she got a chance to drive the penultimate boat in the hydroplane food chain, she found the perfect fit.

“I didn't really feel like I knew what I was doing until I got into this boat,” she said. “I love this boat. It's so easy to drive. It's a Cadillac.”

As a 19-year-old rookie in 2007, Perkins drove the UL-72 Foster Care to both the national boat and driver championships. She won a second straight driver's title last year. And this season she has clinched both titles again coming into Sunday's season finale on Mission Bay.

She comes to San Diego riding a class-record, five-race winning streak capped by becoming the first female driver ever to win a championship race during her hometown Seafair regatta.

Surprisingly, Perkins, who has a working knowledge of the history of her sport, has trouble counting her own wins in the Unlimited Lights. “Between seven and nine, maybe 10,” she said.

But Perkins said she has no desire to try her hand at the more financially lucrative world of car racing.

“I'm a boat racer,” she noted. “This is where I belong. I don't want to be known as a girl who drives. I want to be known as a girl who can drive.”